SINGH, Diwakar Prasad, 1933- AMERICAN OFFICIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 1905-1929.
University of Hawaii, Ph.D., 1964 History, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
AMERICAN OFFICIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE INDIAN
NATIONALIST MOVE~1ENT 1905-1929
A T!~SIS SUBMITTED TO THE GPJ~UATE SCHOOL OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLf'~NT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Thesis Committee:
Norman D. Palmer, Professor of Political Science and Chairman Department of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania, Chairman
Holden Furber, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Donald D. Johnson, Professor of History and Chair­ man, Department of HistorYI University of Hawaii
PREFACE
The purpose of this dissertation is to trace the evolution of
American official attitudes towards the Indian nationalist movement
between 1905 and 1929. Both these dates are great landmarks in the
history of the Indian nationalist movement, indicating a break ~~th
the past, giving Indian nationalism, at each stage, a new direc­
tion and purpose. While the period \~hich followed the partition of
Bengal in 1905 inaugurated an era of active militancy in Indian
nationalism, the end of the year 1929, marked the maturing of the
national aspirations with the adoption of complete independence as
the goal of the Indian nationalist movement. This study makes ex­
tensive use of the Records of the Department of State Relating to
Internal Affairs of India and Burma, 1910-1929 and the Records of
the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between
India and Burma, 1910-1929, recently released by the National
Archives in Washington, D.C., which opened a new vista of research
in Indo-American relations prior to the Second World War. These
records, along with the despatches from U.S. Consular officials at
Bombay (1838-1906) and Calcut'ca (1794-'96 and 1843-1906), as well
as the despatches from the American Consul General at Calcutta,
William H. Michael, between 1906 and 1910 cover a wide range of
ii
iii
The research for this dissertation was done in the National
Archives and the Library of Congress, /iashingto~, D.C., Ne~ York
Public Library, New York City, Van Pelt Library, University of Penn­
sylvania, South Asia Regional Studies Library, University of Penn­
sylvania, the Library of the University of California, Berkeley,
and Gregg M. Sinclair Library, University of Hawaii. The resources
of some other libraries located in the Greater Philadelphia area
were also utilized through inter-library loans. The author expresses
his gratitude to the staff members of these foregoing institutions.
The author is especially grateful to Mrs. rtuth Madara of the South
Asia Library of the University of Pennsylvania who very kindly got
the necessary materials in microfilm and photostat required for
this research.
To Dr. Norman D. Palmer, Professor of Political Science and
Chairman, Department of International Relations, University of Penn­
sylvania, I shall ever remain grateful for his patient, inspiring
and sympathetic guidance and supervision of the dissertation. I am
also thankful to Dr. Holden Furber,Professor of History, University
of Pennsylvania, for his suggestions for improvement.
I express my infinite sense of gratitude to the officials of
the Center for Technical and Cultural Interchange between Zast and
West, University of Hawaii, who very ldndly ma1e my stay at the
University of Pennsylvania as well as my visits to various libraries
possible. I always found them helpful and encouraging.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dr. Donald D. Johnson,
iv
Professor of History and Chairman, Department of History, University
of Hawaii. But for his friendly interest and help, this work could
not have been brought to successful completion. I also thank Dr.
John A. White and other members of the History Department, Univer­
sity of Hawaii, for their constant encouragement. Last but not
least, I am thankful to my colleagues from the East West Center,
Messrs. Reginald Rajapakse and S. N. Pathak, for their friendly
criticism and suggestions from time to time.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I. AHBRICAN OFFICIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 1905-1919
Chapter
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
AHERICAN OFFICIAL IN'fEREST IN NE~i' MANIFESTATIONS OF NATIONALISH IN INDIA, 1905-1912. • • • • • • . • •
EXPRESSIONS OF ~{ERICAN OFFICIAL VIEWS ON BRITISH RULE AND INDIA'S FITNESS FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT, 1905-1912 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
ANERICAN OFFICIAL AT'l'ITUDE TOWARDS EFFORTS BY INDIAN NATIONALS TO PROMOTE INDIA'S FREEDOM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1905-1919•••••••
WOODROW WILSON .Al'W INDIAH SELF-DETERMINATION •
PART II. AJvIERICAH OFFICIAL ATTITUDES Tml'.ARDS THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVE¥~NT 1919-1929
.A}[:.aHCAN OFl<'ICIi;L ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE POST-WAR NATIONALIST UPSURGE IN INDIA, 1919-1922 • • • •
112
170
265
312
BIBLIOGRAPHY • • •
VII.
The bonds between America and India are numerous. History in-
deed linked the two great nations together with a golden chain of
coincidence. Had it not been for undiscovered Inoia, America would
not have been the same America from 1492 on, when Christopher Colum-
bus discovered the New World believing that he had reached "the
1islands of India beyond the Ganges."
Thus, although India, as Jean Lyons has so aptly suggested is
2 "just half a world away" from the United States, the -two countries
have had connections with and influences upon each other since Am-
erican Colonial times. The first definite result insofar as the
American colonists were concerned occurred at the termination of the
War of the Austrian Succession. In the general peace settlement
which reconstructed the European balance at Aix-La-Chappelle in
1748, "the diplomatists weighed the i:nglisb Conquest of Louisburg
against the French capture of !'!adras in India. They agreed on a
mutual restoration overseas of the status quo ante bellum. 1I3
lCristoforo Colombo, The Columbus Letter of 1493, With a new English translation by Frank E. Robbins (Ann Arbor: The Clementes Library Association, 1952), p. 7.
2Jean Lyons, Just Half the World Awa· Search For the New India (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 195
3Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1942), p. 8.
2
England's choice of Madras changed the history of India, and pos-
sibly of America. The New Englanders did not appreciate the mother
country's choice of handing back to the French a naval base which
they had gone to some extent and trouble to capture. This action
was a source of rancor to them because "Louisburg as a threat to
New England's shipping was much nearer than Madras. ,,4 Later, Lord
Cornwallis came to India as Governor General in 1786. He was a man
with a background of the American Revolutionary War, and it was his
surrender at Yorktown on October 17, 1781, just four years after
Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga, which"seemed publicly to confess
the end of the british domination in America, and proclaim the suc­
cess of the 'rebel' revolution. 1I5 The shot that the"embattled
farmers" had first fired on the red-coat was "heard round the
6world," giving birth to a nation jndissolubly associated with a
theory of politics, a philosophy of human rights, valid not for the
former thirteen Colonies alone, but for all men.
But no sooner had the march of Empire ceased in the West, than
it was heard in the East. 7 Britain, which resigned a great part
4Walter Charles Mackett, "Some Aspects of the Development of American Opinion on India, 1918-1947," (unpublished Ph.D. disserta­ tion University of Southern California, 1957), p. 14.
5J • F • C• Fuller, Decisive Battles of the U.S.A. (New York: Beechhurst Press, 1953), p. 89.
6Ralph W. Emerson, Emerson, Selected Writings (New York: Vik- ing Press, 1946), p. 225.
l E•A• Benians, "Beginnings of the The Cambrid e Histor of the British Em Empire, 17 3-1 70., ed. J. Holland Rose University Press, 1940), pp. 12-14, 33.
New Empire, 1783-'93," ire the Growth of the New
Cambridge, Great Britain:
3
of America, embarked on a campaign of expansion in India. Corn­
wallis,8 who had failed in the West, triumphed in the East. But
the ideas which had moved the Colonial world to revolution had per-
ennial appeal, and ultimately recoiled upon the expanded Pax
Britannica in the East, in Asia, and in India when the American de-
mand for self-government was "repeated seriatim from Toronto to
Colombo. ,,9 The revolutionary spirit of America, which had tri-
umphed over Co~nwallis at Yo~ktown in 1781, asserted itself later
in India and demolished his handiwork one hundred and seventy-one
years later.
India achieved her freedom by means of a "revolution"lO from
the same body politic, Great Britain. Although the actual trans-
fer of power took place by an Act of Parliament, India had its
8William H. Seward, American Secretary of State (1861-1869), visited India in 1871. On February 14, 1871, with the Governor of Madras, Lord Napier, he drove to Fort St. George, and in front of the fort on the esplanade he discovered a statue of Lord Cornwallis. He expressed his amazement at this sight: "It was a surprise to us Americans to see so honorable a monument raised in these colonies to the general who surrendered the last of the British armies at York­ town, and so yielded the last resistance to the independence of the American Colonies." America had to wait three-quarters of a century to see the end of that surprise. See William H. Seward, Travels Around the World (New York: Appleton and Co., 1873), pp. 334-335.
9Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the 3econd British Empire, 1763-1793, Vol. I (London: Longman's Green and Co., 1952), p. 10.
10Nehru said in a speech during his first visit to the United States that "We have achieved our freedom through revolution."
See Jawaharlal Nehru, Speeches, a149-'53 (Delhi: Govern­ ment of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1954) p. 123,
The Americans
the President of the Indian 1ational Congre5s in 1929 proclaimed
that the object of the Indian Nationalist Movement was to bring
about India's complete independence from British rule. Thus, the
nation took its Independence Pledge on Uanuary 26, 1930, and this
pledge continued to be repeated y~ar after year until independence
was achieved.
Like many ~uropean nations, j~erica tou established its first
direct contact with India in the sphere of trade. Merchantmen were
the first Americans to reach India. The pioneer American traders
d .1.h . t f· d f· t 11crosse ~.e s~as ~n ques 0 pr~zes an pro ~ s.
viewed Asia as a whole and called it the East Indies. This trade,
to which they gave the generic name of the East India Trade, in-
eluded all the commerce whose destination or origin lay in either
the Indian or ~estern Pacific Cceans. This trade was not confined
to any particular area; Calcutta, Sumatra, Northwest Coast, Canton
stood side by side and were all more or less related to each other,
interdependent, and in turn, were almost a part of the South Ameri­
can, West Indian and European Commerce. 12 ~he early American trade
with India was therefore a part of this East India Trade, It was
not the outward cargoes but the incoming imports that were important.
IlSeward I'v. Livermore, "iarly Commercial and Consular Rela­ tions With the East Indies," The racific Historical Review, Vol. XV, No.1 (March, 1946), p. 31.
12Tyler Dennett, Americans in East .Asia (New York: The hac­ millan Co., 1922), p. 3.
5
The trade arose out of a desire "to secure for the United States
certain commodities such as Indian muslins and sfices, Chinese
1­ teas and silks, for which there was a demand. II )
The first American vessel to arrive at India's coast was the
United States of PhiladelJhia, which appeared off Pondicherry on
the day after Christmas, 1784. In June, 1785, the Hydra became the
first American ship to sail up the Hoogly to Calcutta under Ameri­
14can colors. It was followed by the Chesapeake of Baltimore which
arrived in Calcutta in the autumn of 1787. The treatment accorded
to American ships in India by the East India Company during the
period preceding the negotiation of the Jay Treaty was "one of
friendly toleration. II15
In respect to the importance of such an enterprise, Blias
Ha;;kett Derby of Salem found the American trade with Mauritius and
India more profitable than that with Canton. 16
Before 1790 the
total American tonnage in Indian ports exceeded that at Canton. It
was to explore the possibilities of the expansion of American trade
with India that !'!ajor Samuel Shaw, the first American Consul at
Canton, paid a visit to Bengal during March and April 1788.17
13Ibid., p. 18.
14 Holden Furber, liThe Beginnings of American Trade with India," New England Quarterly, Vol. XI, No.2 (June, 1938), p. 235.
l5Ibid • ,
16Dennett, Ope cit., p. 27.
17Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Ha ,; or Samuel Shaw (Boston: Wil­ liam Crosby and h. P. Nicholas, 1847), p. 266.
6
Major Shaw's visit to India was more than a mere private sojourn.
It was more or le~s an official mission that he was performing,
somewhat in the nature of the first official visit to India by an
.~erican citizen. Major Samuel Shaw was instructed by the Secre-
tary of State, John Jay, to inquire into the advantages of carrying
18on "circuitous tre.de in that part of the wor Id. "
By the time Jay went to England to negotiate his treaty, Am-
erican ships were engaged to a considerable degree in a "circuitous
trade" between India and Europe. 'l'hey were also engaged in the
transmission of Anglo-Indian wealth from India to Europe in foreign,
but chiefly American ships, a method wlrich became known as the
"clandestine trade.,,19 This and other complications which arose
because of the outbreak of war in Europe, Article XIII of Jay's
Treaty of 1794 20
most favorable treatment for American vessels engaged in the East
India trade in British territories and possessions, it tried also to
prevent American bottoms from being used to promote the so-called
"clandestine circuitous and coastal trades." The enactment of Jef-
ferson's Embargo Act of 1807 "seriously crippled the American
18U•S •A., The Diplomatic correspondence4Vol. VII (Washing­ ton, D.C.: Francis Preston Blair, 1834), p. 4 1.
19Northcote Parkinson, Trade in Eastern Seas (London: Cam- bridge University Press, 1937), p. 358.
20Hunter Miller (ed.), Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America (Washington: U.S. Govt. l'rintillg Of­ fice, 1931), pp. 245-265.
7
"R"'st Indl'a Trade.,,21 It d'd t h "f th s t'o of_~ 1 no, owever, slgnl y e ces a 1 n
the period of activities which commenced in 1784, which ended only
"with the decline of the clipper ships and, especially with the de-
struction of the American merchant marine, during the American
Civil War.,,22
Among the measures taken by the new American Government for
the protection of its foreign trade was the establishment of a
Consular SerVlce in 1790. American trade activity was the "chief
motivation,,23 for the establishment of vonsular relations with
India. Trading delegations from coastal cities and merchantmen
presented memorials to the Continental Congress to establish Consu-
l t · Ch' d 1 h . A' 24 Ct' O'D 11ar pos s In lna an e sew ere In Sla. ap aJ.n onne on
June 20, 1786, wrote to the president and the members of Congress to
issue him necessary credentials to act as General Commissioner with
authority to negotiate trade agreements with "the principal inde-
pendent powers in Asia," which included "Tippo Saib, the son a.nd
successor of the famous Hyder Ally, and the Marathas, on the coast
of Maiabar.,,25 George Cabot of Boston in a letter to
21Furber, "The Beginning of American Trade vii th India," Ope cit., p. 263
22 Dennett, Ope cit., p. 26.
23Earl Robert Schmidt, "American Relations with South Asia, 1900-1940", (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsyl­ vania, 1955), p. 5.
24 U•S . Continental Congress, Journals of the Continental Con­ gressg 1774-1789 vol XXV (washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1922), p. 81 •
25 U•S • Diplomatic Correspondence, vol. VII, op.cit., pp. 445- 450.
8
President washington dated November 16, 1792, urged the importance
of appointing a Gonsul and mentioned the "very precious tenure" of
American rights in India. Cabot and many of the Massachusetts mer-
chants recommended the appointment of Benjamin Joy of Newburyport
and Boston. 26
Shortly after his arrival in Galcutta, Joy had an unsatisfac-
tory interview with ~ir John Shore, the Governor General of India.
Shore had no advice from his home government with respect to admit-
ting an iunerican Consul, "and it was his i3hore'~7 opinion that
they [the government of the East India Gompanl7 could not receive
him {Jol7 as such without some instructions from england. ,,27 The
~nglish merchants in India were jealous of the privileges already
accorded American commerce and were fearful that Americans, once
firmly established in South Asia, would cut lnto their Indian and
South Asian commerce and trade. The East India Company refused to
allow American agents or vice agents to be stationed at Madras and
28Bombay. Joy remained in Calcutta as a commercial agent subject to
jurisdiction of the local government. This curtailment of his Con-
sular privileges did not appeal to Joy, who returned to Newburyport
the following year and handed in his resignation on January 24, 1796,
26Dennett, Ope cit., p. 29.
27Calcutta, November 24, 1794, Record Group 59, General Records of the Dept. of State in the National Archives, 1794-'96 and 1843­ 1906, hereinafter indicated by the post and the date of the dispatch.
28Ibid •
9
alleging ill health and doctor's orders as his reason for not wish-
ing to return to India. William J. Miller of Philadelphia, an
American merchant then living in Calcutta was reco~nended by Secre-
tary of state Timothy Pickering to succeed Joy, but although his
nomination was confirmed by the Senate on February 22, 1796, Miller
never assumed office. For nearly forty years thereafter the United
states did not have any consular representation in Calcutta. 29
It was not until July, 1843 that James B. Higginson, a native
of Boston, an American merchant in Calcutta, acknowledged the re-
ceipt of his commission of appointment as Consul from Mr. Everett,
the American Minister in London. Higgir.son's cOLwission of appoint-
ment was published in the Government Gazette "by order of the Su­
preme Government of India.,,30 Thlis Higginson was the first Ameri-
can Consul to receive official recognition. He was succeeded by
Charles E~ffnagle on September 27, 1847. The latter, while accept-
ing his appointment, expressed his proud satisfaction in having
raised "for the first time the American flag in the city of Calcutta.,,3l
He was later commissioned as the first United States Consul General
to British India (September 1855), which made all other Consular
29Livermore, "Early Commercial and Consular Relations with the East," Ope cit., p. 36.
30Calcutta, July 12, 1843.
31Calcutta, December 20, 1847.
The American Consuls and Consular agents in India constitute
"one important source of intelligence 1l un India. Their reports,
however, in the nineteenth century contain 1Ilarge gaps and scanty
stretches in the area of comments regarding politics, religion, and
Indian society." .Although there are some bright spots, the bulk of
their letters during this period concern 1I picayune matters."33
The nineteenth century American Consuls were primarily in-
tended to act as liason between the United States Government and
American interests in the areas they were stationed. Their princi-
pal duties consisted of keeping shipping records, adjusting merchant
marine problems, and writing despatches on Sundr..y matters 1I outside
32In 1850 Huffnagle had agents at Bombay, Nadras, Moulmein (a port in lower Burma) and ~ingapore. They were all acting Con­ sular agents as they never received Senate confirmation. By 1860's the Calcutta Consul General had seven official posts and…